


In His Arms

by samielissabeth



Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27503635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samielissabeth/pseuds/samielissabeth
Summary: This is a quick one-shot about what may have really happened in the bonding moment where Keith cradled Lance in his arms.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 72
Collections: Langst Halloween Exchange 2020





	In His Arms

**Author's Note:**

> This is a langstron gift for @/typintypos. I'm so sorry for the tardiness, but I hope you enjoy!

It had been at least a week since Sendak had attempted to take over the castle and Lance and Shiro had nearly been blown up because of it, since they had helped save the Balmera and free the Balmerans from Zarkon. Keith found it hard to believe that it had been that long since everything happened, it felt like yesterday, everything was burned into his mind. It was also stuck in his mind that Lance nearly didn’t make it from the blast he’d shielded Coran from and that he _openly_ denied the fact that Keith had carried him all the way to the infirmary. In the back of his mind, Keith knew Lance had been joking, merely saving face in front of the team, but there was a small part of him that wouldn’t let go of it. He had been losing sleep over it since the words had left Lance’s mouth.

Everyone had gone their separate ways after finishing dinner (or what they all figured was dinner, keeping track of time was difficult in the middle of space). A few hours had easily passed since then, the halls were empty and the usual shuffling around had died down. It seemed like even Pidge had gone to sleep, that or she’d fallen asleep in the lab again, it wasn’t unusual. However, Keith seemed to be the only one still awake as he left the training deck. He’d actually trained for a bit before his mind was flooded with memories of just one week ago and he laid down on the training deck floor to calm down a bit. A bit turned into a while, and he found himself walking alone back to his room, his head still full of thoughts from the past week.

He wondered how Lance was. Keith had talked with Shiro and made sure he was alright after it all. It wasn’t difficult for him to talk to Shiro. He knew how Shiro was. He didn’t know how Lance was. As far as he could tell, Lance seemed alright. He still cracked jokes and flirted with anyone he could, everything he was doing made it seem like he was ok, but there was no way that he was _actually_ ok, was there? Keith was back at his room faster than he’d anticipated, he had been so caught up in his thoughts he didn’t realize he’d walked across the entire castle. As he stepped in front of the doors, they slid open, showing the barren that was his room. The doors stayed open for as long as he stood in front of them, and Keith tempted going inside. He even stood in the doorway for a moment before stepping back into the hallway. Lance’s room was just a few doors down.

The hallway was dark ahead of him, but not pitch black, the faint glow of Altean tech illuminating it just enough to see ahead. So much had changed so quickly for all of them, and Keith wondered if there would ever be a time when the technology of the Alteans and other alien races would stop being fascinating. He hoped there wouldn’t be. Even things that were less interesting from the average person’s perspective, like the mechanics of the kitchen, or even the healing pods in the infirmary were advanced beyond anything Keith could imagine. He found himself curious to what extent of a “full recovery” like Allura mentioned the healing pods could achieve. Did the Galran have medical technologies like that? Would Shiro have the scar across his face if he’d had access to technology like it? Did the healing pods even prevent scarring?

Before he even knew it, Keith found himself outside Lance’s door. He hesitated. Maybe Lance was already asleep, it was late after all. He didn’t want to wake Lance up. Keith leaned towards the door and couldn’t hear anything, so he thought for a moment he could check on Lance tomorrow, but he couldn’t imagine Lance was sleeping much given everything that had happened recently. He knocked anyway, and the door opened far faster than Keith had ever expected.

“Hey.” Lance’s voice was soft, his face more neutral than Keith could ever remember seeing it. It was almost blank, if he could call it that.

“Hey, uh,” Keith’s voice cracked a bit, heat rose to his cheeks just seeing Lance. His heart skipped a beat. “How are you doing?” He crossed his arms over his chest to hide the fact that his hands were shaky.

“Fine,” Lance muttered. “What are you doing here?” One hand reached up and ran through his hair, which was only half dry from the shower he took before getting ready for bed. Keith’s eyes followed his hand, watching as his delicate fingers twirled small curls around them.

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing is all.” Keith couldn’t make eye contact with Lance, and the second he felt that Lance’s eyes were back on him his own gaze shifted to down the hall. “A lot has happened in the past week, man. It’s just a lot. I wanted to know how you’re holding up.” Keith was trying his best not to fidget. He didn’t want Lance knowing he was anxious in any capacity.

Lance shrugged his shoulders, looking down at the ground. Keith knew whatever he was about to say wouldn’t be the truth. “I mean, I’m fine, Keith.” Lance chuckled a bit to himself. “As fine as I can be, I guess, but yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” The question left Keith’s mouth before he even thought about what he was saying, how what he was asking came off. He hoped he hadn’t offended Lance.

“What, do I not seem like it?”

“No, no, Lance, you’ve seemed alright, I just,” Keith sucked in a breath and finally raised his eyes to meet Lance’s ocean blue ones. “I wanted to make sure. What happened wasn’t normal, it’s ok to not feel alright.” Lance just stared back at him, not sure what to say. He’d never seen Keith act this way, and the kind of things he was saying were things he expected to come from his older sister Veronica, not from Keith. “Can… Can I come in?” Keith’s question took him off guard.

“Yeah, uh, yeah, you can.” Lance took a step back to let Keith come inside, though he didn’t quite know what part of him was really letting him in. Keith had been the first person to really ask how he was doing, maybe that’s why. “Have you been ok?”

“What, me?” Keith shook his head. “Yeah, I’m fine, I came here to check on you, don’t go diverting it somewhere else, Lance.” He reached a hand up to Lance’s shoulder, at first hesitating, but eventually landing gently with a rub of his thumb. “Lance, you can be honest with me.” Keith’s eyes were gentle, and he wouldn’t break eye contact with Lance at this point. Lance’s eyes were welling up. “Are you alright?” Lance’s bottom lip quivered and he sucked in a breath. He knew going in that Lance wouldn’t be alright, but Keith didn’t think it would be like this. His heart was beating out of his chest. “It’s ok if you’re not. Everyone is here for you. _I’m_ here fo you.”

Lance nodded his head in the slightest, sniffling and looking down before asking, “Can I have a hug?” His voice shook, and Keith was almost afraid to say yes and hug him, worried Lance would break at any moment. Instead of answering his question out loud, though, Keith wrapped his arms gently around Lance, under his arms so that Lance could lean on him if he needed to.

Lance’s crying was softer than Keith had expected, he’d always imagined Lance as a more verbal crier. It was quiet though. If you weren’t paying attention to it, you would’ve missed that he was crying at all. He was shaking a bit in Keith’s arms, and Lance eventually wrapped his arms around Keith, burying his face into his shoulder. A few ragged breathes escaped his lips, Keith wondered how long Lance had been holding this in. It seemed like Lance’s body was just dead weight against Keith’s body.

“Why don’t you sit down, bud?” Keith started to move slowly towards Lance’s bed, wanting to sit him down so that he didn’t collapse at any point, whether it was on him or, on an off chance, onto the floor. Lance seemed to be nodding into his shoulder, though it was hard to tell since Lance was essentially clinging to Keith.

“Is there anything I can do?” Keith asked as the two of them sat down. “Do you need water, maybe tissues or something?” Lance slowly detached himself from Keith and shook his head, sniffling more intensely and wiping his nose with his sleeve.

“I didn’t think going to space would be like this, you know?” Lance’s voice cracked at the end of his statement. “I didn’t think we’d be defending the universe, or fighting aliens, let alone being in danger all the time.” He pulled his legs up onto his bed, sitting criss-cross and pulling a blanket over himself part way. “I still think about it every night. The blast I mean.”

Keith just watched Lance as he spoke. His eyes darted around, never landing on one place for too long and definitely not looking at back at Keith. He fiddled with the hem of his blanket, trying to keep his fingers from shaking. Hair fell over his forehead and he didn’t bother to push it out of the way. Lance looked tired, _exhausted_.

“I keep playing it over and over, as much of it as I can remember anyways. I just, jumped for Coran, I couldn’t let him get hurt, I-” His voice hitched and he took in a shaky breath.

“Hey, it’s ok. You don’t have to talk about it.” Keith was trying his best to soothe Lance, to calm him down like Shiro and Adam had calmed him down in the past. “We can just sit here if you want. We don’t have to talk.” Lance’s grip on the blanket tightened as he nodded slightly. It felt like all he was doing was nodding and sniffling, but he couldn’t seem to do much else.

They sat there on Lance’s bed, quietly together. Quiet tears rolled down Lance’s cheeks, and Keith sat by feeling helpless to do anything but sit with him. He reached out and put a hand over Lance’s. Though he tensed, Lance seemed a bit more at ease with the physical reminder that Keith was there with him.

“I’d wondered for a bit if there was a scar, if the healing pods could go that far.” Lance spoke into his lap. “But then I realized maybe it’s better if I didn’t see it.”

“Do you want to know?” Keith’s question felt calloused, but he figured if Lance brought it up it was something still bugging him, eating away at the edges of his thoughts. “I-I can look for you if you want.”

“You will?” Lance looked up into Keith’s blue-grey eyes for the first time all night, and for a moment he felt entirely calm. Keith could’ve sworn he saw the slightest bit of a smile tug at the corners of Lance’s lips, like he was finally excited to get an answer to something that had been bothering him. “Are you sure?”

Keith nodded totally quiet, his lips pressed together into a thin line. His cheeks were hot and now his hands shook like Lance’s did moments before. He reached out towards the hem of Lance’s shirt, offering to help in any way he could. Raising his arms over his head, Lance let Keith pull his shirt off. For a moment, he thought about spitting back some smart remark back about how the two of them were alone together, but he didn’t have the energy to even think of some witty come back. He was surprisingly comfortable with Keith, shirtless or not, and he couldn’t tell if it was because he trusted everybody on the team or if it was because he found himself growing more fond of Keith the longer they were all in space together. He couldn’t deny that he was fond of Keith beforehand.

“Alright are you ok with this?” Keith asked quietly, setting Lance’s shirt aside on his bed. Without acknowledging what Keith had said, Lance turned around so that his back was to him and so that Keith didn’t have to see his the redness creeping into his cheeks.

Keith didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that. Before he noticed anything out of place or odd about his back, Keith noticed the freckles that covered his sun-kissed skin, freckles he’d gotten from many summers of playing outside with his family. His skin was also incredibly smooth, up until the edges of the blast scar that consumed most of his back. Keith sucked in a breath, holding it as his eyes scanned the jagged scar across Lance’s back.

“It’s that bad, huh?” Lance sighed, knowing from Keith’s tense breath that there was a scar of some sort, and probably a pretty extensive one. Keith’s fingers ghosted over the edges, surprised at how much of his back was covered. The edges were rough, small parts of it looking almost like splatters. Most of the scar tissue itself was a light pinkish color, almost like it wasn’t fully scarred yet. He pressed his hand gently against Lance’s back, afraid he would hurt him even though he knew he wouldn’t.

“No, no it’s not bad,” Keith said quietly after a while. “It’s just a scar, that’s all.”

“Can you trace it?” Lance asked. “I want to have an idea of how big it is.”

“Ok, um…” Keith hovered his hand over the top edge of the scar, which spiked at the top of his back, almost at his neck. A gentle finger began tracing the outside of the blast scar, moving first across the span of Lance’s upper back, then moving down the side. Part of the right side of the scar reached around his back and threatened to show from the front, but it stopped just short. Keith heard Lance mutter something as his hand moved along this part of the scar, but he didn’t really understand what he said. The scar curved along the bottom of his ribcage and went down a bit farther than the middle of his back. Keith felt bad tracing the outline of the scar; it was obviously upsetting Lance, as shown by the increasing amount of sobs he could hear, but he knew in the back of his mind that it would upset Lance more if he didn’t continue. The left side of the scar seemed a bit deeper, the edges more intense. Keith felt himself aching at the thought of what this did to Lance, he was now truly faced with the reality that Lance could’ve died. He was almost done tracing the scar tissue when he heard the first real, intense sob come from Lance. It made him stop for a moment, taking his hand off of his teammate, his _friend’s,_ back.

“Lance?” Keith’s voice was soft as he leaned forward, his own body pressing into Lance’s back a bit as he tried to understand where Lance was at. “Lance, it’s ok. It might seem big but I promise it’s ok.” He wrapped his arms gently around the blue paladin’s torso from behind, leaning fully against him and resting his head against the top of his back. He was warm, really warm. Keith hoped Lance couldn’t feel how fast his heart was beating. “You’re ok, I’m here.” Without a second thought, Keith pressed a gentle kiss against the nape of Lance’s neck, the ends of his hair tickling his nose. He pressed another soft kiss in the crook of his neck, keeping his face there afterwards.

“Why don’t we lay down, ok? You’re tired.” Keith’s voice was soft in a way that was unknown even for himself. They laid down, Keith’s arms still around Lance. A sniffle would come from Lance every now and then, but it seemed to Keith that he had stopped crying for the most part based on what he could hear with his ear pressed against his back.

Lance was curled up, legs pulled close to him with one hand rising against Keith’s and the other under his pillow. Keith’s legs were beside Lance’s curled up with him. His body was pressed against Lance’s, protecting him in a way. Though the blanket was down at the end of the bed, neither of them were cold.

“Thank you, Keith,” Lance said quietly. “For staying with me tonight.”

“Of course, it’s the least I could do.” Keith’s face was red, and he was really grateful that Lance’s back was to him - scar or not - so that he couldn’t see it. “I’ll be here whenever you need.” He placed one more kiss against the top part of Lance’s scar, hoping that it would help Lance know eventually that it didn’t matter that he had a scar, that he was just as beautiful as ever to him.


End file.
